As college realignment wheel spins, UTSA in good place

July 27, 2023
Updated: July 27, 2023 5:30 p.m.
Once Colorado made its move, it looked like only a matter of time. A once-powerful conference was reeling, perhaps on the brink of ruin, and some in college sports feared the worst.
Realignment was choking the life out of tradition. The little guys were getting squeezed out. Good schools and strong programs were going to be left behind. And sooner or later, only the richest of the rich were going to survive.
But in the middle of all that panic a dozen years ago, the league that Colorado left found a way to stick together. And one of the richest of the rich made a prediction.
“Everybody is going to be a winner in this,” DeLoss Dodds, then Texas’ athletic director, said in 2011 after the Big 12 decided to forge on as a 10-team conference. “Everybody is going to make more money, and it’s going to be fine.”
It's easy now to poke fun at that quote, considering that over the following decade the Longhorns didn’t wind up winning much of anything on the football field and eventually bailed on the league they once fought to save. But now that Colorado is making another move — returning to the Big 12 and putting another league in apparent peril — it’s also worth remembering what Dodds got right.
Everybody ended up making more money.
College sports, all things considered, turned out to be fine.
And even as some worry about another round of realignment further separating the haves from the have-nots, there’s also this: It's never been more realistic for a football school like UTSA to dream about knocking off a football school like Georgia.
Is there an enormous gap in money and resources between the Roadrunners, entering their 13th season as a program, and the Bulldogs, coming off back-to-back national championships? Dang right there is. And considering the massive new media-rights deals on the way for the Southeastern Conference, that gap might be getting bigger.
But here is what American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco got right this week when he renewed his plea to stop differentiating between “Power Five” conferences (the group that traditionally has included the SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12) and “Group of Five” leagues (the ones that included UTSA’s former home, Conference USA, and it’s current one, the American):
Under the new 12-team College Football Playoff format, which is set to debut in 2024, all 10 conferences will be treated equally. Automatic bids will go to the six highest-ranked conference champions, whether those champions play in the SEC or the Big Ten or the Sun Belt. So the distinction between “Power Five” and “Group of Five” shouldn’t matter anymore.